Nothing Human

by Nancy Kress

“Like you could do it without giving her three tits,” Sam said.

  “That’d be okay!”

  Rebecca said, “I’m not touching that stuff. Bacteria! How do you know it isn’t dangerous?”

  “Nothing is dangerous,” Pam said earnestly. “And if an error occurs, Pete and I will rebuild it.”

  “Rebuild Rafe, then,” Jason said. “Make him taller than a third-grader.”

  “Ha ha,” Rafe said, from the front of the room.

  “Let’s begin,” Pam said.

  It was the strangest lesson Lillie had ever had. Images formed in her mind; Emily and Rafe explained them as well as they could; Pete and Pam instantly learned the vocal terminology from them and explained further. Some images were pictures to remember, and to her surprise Lillie found that now she remembered them easily, without even taking notes. Some images were instructions on how to use the gene-building equipment, and she remembered those, too. The four girls at her table worked together all day, and it felt good.

  Sajelle, Lillie realized with amusement, hadn’t even needed to read anything.

  They discussed it all at dinner, another incredible meal. “They did something to our minds,” Jon said. “This time I’m sure.”

  Rebecca stopped eating. “What do you mean, ‘did something to our minds’?”

  “I don’t like school much,” Jon said. “And there’s no way I’d do biology all day like that unless I was on something. They put some gas in the room, I bet. So we’d like learning genetics.”

  Madison considered this. “If they did … does it matter? Isn’t it just like … I don’t know … using fizzies to get a little higher jump for a dance routine?”

  Sam snorted. “That’s probably the only thing you did use fizzies for in your milk-cum school.”

  Mike, logical, said, “The difference, Madison, is that you chose to use fizzies for dance. This was done without our choice. If it was done at all.”

  Lillie remembered how contentedly she’d worked for hours and hours at something that didn’t ordinarily interest her. And now she remembered everything she’d learned. “It was done to us, Mike.”

  He nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  By now the whole table had stopped eating to listen. Jessica said, “Nobody’s going to fuck with my mind! Tomorrow they can just crawl up their own asses. I’m not going back.”

  “Me either,” Sophie said.

  A motion at the end of the table caught Lillie’s eye. Elizabeth swayed, her face grotesquely distorted. She looked like she was in the worst imaginable pain. A minute later she fainted, crashing off her chair.

  Someone screamed. Rafe said importantly, “Let me by! I know CPR!” But Elizabeth didn’t need CPR. She revived almost instantly. As she pulled herself off the floor, her limp long hair swung over her face, hiding it, but not before Lillie saw the return of Elizabeth’s anguish and her eyes fill with tears. The pain wasn’t physical; Elizabeth jumped up and ran out of the commons toward her room.

  “Fucking nuts,” Sam said.

  “Why should she mind having her mind manipulated?” Rebecca said. “It already is by that so-called religion of hers.”

  “Naw. Four-eyes just can’t stand to feel good.”

  “Feeling good might feel seeexxxxyyyy.”

  “A sin! God will punish her!”

  “That’s enough, you morons,” Madison said.

  People resumed eating, except for a foul-mouthed group at Sam’s end of the table who went on riffing about Elizabeth. Madison scowled at them. Julie seemed close to tears.

  Lillie put another forkful of spiced carrots in her mouth. It wasn’t that Elizabeth minded feeling good. Elizabeth was caught. If she went to class, she’d voluntarily give her mind over to forces of the devil. If she didn’t go, she couldn’t learn to “undo” the genetic engineering the forces of the devil had already done to her. God wanted her to go to class; it was a sin against God to go to class. Never mind that none of this was true; Elizabeth believed it was true. And was filled with horror and pain.

  Lillie felt sorry for Elizabeth. But she didn’t go after her. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  After dinner everybody except Elizabeth went to the garden, their favorite spot. Lillie was surprised when Mike dropped beside her on the grass. “Lillie, I want to ask you something.”

  She felt herself color. “Yeah?”

  He said, “Remember yesterday? We left Quantico in the middle of the night, and everybody was too excited to sleep, so we got a tour of the Flyer and we see our rooms and everything. Then all of a sudden we’re being taken to eat dinner, see the garden, and lights out for night. What happened to all the hours of that night and day in between arriving and dinner?”

  Lillie was confused. “I don’t know. I guess we slept. Yes, we did … I woke up in my bed just before we ate dinner.”

  “But do you remember going to sleep in your bed?”

  “Well, I … no. I don’t. But I must have.”

  “Or we were put to sleep.”

  Slowly Lillie nodded.

  “Well,” Mike said, getting up awkwardly, “I just thought I’d ask.” He strolled off toward the basketball court.

  Despite herself, Lillie watched him go. He had a nice body. Not as tall as Jason or Jon, a little pudgy in the middle maybe, but nice.

  Madison and Rebecca came over. Lillie bent over, pretending to look for four-leaf clovers in the grass so they wouldn’t see her blushing.

  CHAPTER 9

  The next day, everyone was in class right after breakfast, including Jessica, Sophie, and Elizabeth. And the day after that, and the day after that. It took Lillie by surprise to realize that weeks were sliding by.

  Three weeks. Four. Seven. Ten. How could it have been ten weeks already? Lillie meant to ask Pam or Pete when they were going back down to Earth. She needed to see … who? Oh, Uncle Keith! Of course! She would ask tomorrow.

  Tomorrow came, and somehow she forgot.

  Twelve weeks. Fourteen. She forgot to keep track.

  Each day was exactly the same as the others. Shower, breakfast, class all day, dinner. Evenings in the garden having fun. Pam was teaching three girls plus Rafe to genetically engineer flowers. Games had materialized, after being requested and described: Chess. Cards. Chinese checkers. Hannah had brought a music-cube with her, programmed with hit songs. Her favorite was “Don’t Matter None to Me,” by Printer Scream, and she played it over and over in the “cafe.” Basketball remained popular. It was hard to say what they all did, exactly, in the garden every evening, but the time passed and it was all fun. There were arguments but no fights. Even Sam, the bully, and Jessica, the bitch, didn’t cause too much trouble.

  Lillie hung around mostly with Madison and Sajelle. Sajelle’s older sister, fifteen, had already had a baby.

  “Last year,” she told them matter-of-facfly. “My mother really mad. She wanted Dee to finish high school, get herself a decent job. But Dee and Ty … you know. And the baby so darling! You should see her.”

  “What’s her name?” Madison asked, not quite able to hide her disapproval.

  “Kezia.” Sajelle frowned. “You know … I miss her, but I …” She searched for words, didn’t find them, let her hands fall helplessly into her lap.

  You miss her but you don’t miss her, Lillie said silently. She knew. She still couldn’t remember Jenny’s face.

  But she remembered all the genetics from class.

  She knew the location on the human genome of a hundred and sixty genes, what proteins they could express, and how to alter many of them to express something else. She could turn genes on or off by manipulating their promoters, and could then use the results to turn off or on other genes, creating dozens of combinations of different effects. She had custom-built a bacteria capable of learning where she would put out its “food.” She had learned to splice in extra copies of genes, cut out copies of genes, locate and replace damaged genes. She understood none of the equipment she used,
but she could manipulate it expertly. So could all of them.

  Only once did she question what she was doing. Rafe and she happened to be sitting at a table in the garden, drinking glasses of cold water flavored with some delicious plant that Pete had taught Sophie to grow. The others had left. Rafe said abruptly, “It’s not new, you know.”

  “What’s not new?” Lillie said, not really interested. Rafe’s frenetic energy and hyperintellectualism put her off.

  “The genetics we’re learning. The Human Genome Project decoded a lot of this stuff over ten years ago, and the Protein Effort found out the rest of it. Well, maybe not how to get proteins to do alternate expression, but everything else. This isn’t new genetics they’re teaching us.”

  “It’s new to me.”

  “You don’t care, do you, any more than anyone else does. You’re the eighth person I’ve tried to have this conversation with, and nobody cares except Emily that we’ve been carted up to a spaceship to learn genetics that our scientists on the ground already know.”

  That got Lillie’s attention. “Are you sure, Rafe?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I didn’t win the Fanshaw National Science Prize without knowing what I’m talking about.”

  “I thought you were only a state winner, not the national winner.”

  “Even so. Lillie, why did they bring us here?”

  “To learn the right way.” She didn’t even have to think about the answer; it rose to her lips from the deep well of certainty.

  “Well, yes … but even so …” Rafe seemed to lose his thought. He frowned. “Lillie …”

  Caught by his uncharacteristic foundering, she looked at him. Really looked. Of course, they were sitting down, but his shoulder seemed to be on a level with hers. “Rafe, stand up.”

  He did.

  “You’re taller than you were when we came.”

  “Yes. Boys get their growth later than girls, my mother always said so. But Lillie …”

  “No, it’s not that.” She tried to concentrate. “Look at Rebecca. Over there, with Julie.”

  “What about her?”

  “Her skin is all cleared up. And it was really bad when we came here … wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t notice girls’ skin. I have better things to think about.”

  Lillie ignored him. Getting up, she started a slow tour of the garden, looking at everyone. Really looking.

  Julie was laughing with Rebecca, a free open laugh. When was the last time Lillie had seen Julie cry? A long time. Julie used to cry at everything.

  Susan was no longer overweight. She was still curvy, but a good curvy.

  Alex, who used to be so skinny that Sam said you could use him for a fishing pole, had bulked up.

  Sam’s hair didn’t hang lankly over his ears anymore. It was thick and shiny.

  And then Lillie came to Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth was sitting by the garden pond, braiding rushes together and sticking flowers in them to make a crown. She looked up suspiciously as Lillie approached. “What do you want?”

  Still Elizabeth. But definitely not Elizabeth. She was slimmer, too, but the big change was her face. Her features were somehow more … what? Regular. Prettier. Her skin was clear. And she wasn’t…

  “Elizabeth, what happened to your glasses?”

  She looked briefly puzzled. “I don’t need them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know why not. I just don’t.” She held up the garland she was weaving. “For the feast of Christ the Holy King. It’s tomorrow, November 26.”

  November 26? They had been here for three months?

  “How do you know today is November 25?” Lillie demanded.

  “I asked Pam,” Elizabeth said triumphantly. “She understands that I need to keep the holy days of obligation.”

  Lillie just stared. Pam understood? But Elizabeth had once told Lillie that Pam and Pete represented the forces of the devil … hadn’t she? Was Lillie remembering right?

  “Hey, Lillie, come dance with us,” Rebecca called. “What are you doing talking with that dork?”

  Lillie didn’t know what she was doing talking to Elizabeth. They’d been discussing something important … wait, something about Elizabeth’s religion … no, her looks…

  “Come on!” Rebecca called impatiently. She’d gathered six of the girls together for a “dance” to the music on Hannah’s cube. “Don’t Matter None to Me” pounded its pronounced beat. Lillie hesitated another moment, then ran over to join Rebecca. Bonnie came, too, and Amy, with flowers in her hair.

  Lillie did wonder briefly why they never seemed to invite the boys —hadn’t Madison and Rebecca, at least, liked boys?—but then she forgot the boys as the dancing started. It was too much fun.

  Some uncounted weeks later, Lillie woke up as usual, showered in the girls’ bathroom, dressed and went into commons for breakfast. In the doorway she stopped cold. Something was very different.

  Nothing looked different. People sitting at the long table, eating the wonderful food, talking … No, something was different. In the talking, maybe? But she could hear scraps of conversation, it was the same things they always talked about.

  ” — raising the genemod roses, see, you have to — “

  “—and three shots from the foul line, only—”

  ” — a dance after dinner, would you — “

  Something was different. Lillie sat down and said to Jason, “Would you please pass the cereal?” He turned and held the bowl out to her, and something in her chest turned over.

  God, he was cute! Of course, everybody knew that, Jason wanted to be an actor and he was the best looking of the boys, but Lillie had never noticed how really handsome he was. His black hair fell across his forehead in a slanting line, and that smile …

  Their hands brushed when she took the bowl from him, and Lillie felt a little dizzy.

  “Lillie,” Mike said on the other side of her, “would you like to sit at my table in class today? I don’t know why we always sit with the same people. It’s boring.”

  She turned to Mike, and a warm feeling crept up from her belly to her chest, up through her neck … She’d never noticed how broad his shoulders were. Broader, really, than Jason’s.

  “Yeah,” Rafe said across the table. “We’d learn more if we changed lab partners and got new perspectives on … on the material.”

  Lillie laughed and looked at him. When had Rafe developed that gleam in his eyes? He was actually witty, sometimes, now that she thought of it. He could be a pain, but he could also be fun.

  Breakfast had never tasted so good before.

  In class she sat with Mike, Rafe, and Emily. Emily, that pale small brainy shrinking violet, tossed her white-blond hair and teased Rafe.

  “That’s not the right sequence, Rafaelo. If you don’t remove the repressor from that gene, your RNA polymerase isn’t ever going to get going.”

  “I was just going to flex the repressor a bit, not remove it,” Rafe said, smiling at Emily.

  “You obviously must believe in repression, then.”

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What about you, Em?”

  “Depends on the circumstances,” she said, looking at him sideways through half-lowered lashes. “Sometimes repression is a good thing.”

  “And sometimes you can slip through repressors.”

  “Can you, Rafe?”

  “Well, RNA polymerase can. Just flex the repressor a little …” Mike flexed his biceps. “Like this, Rafe? Or maybe I should ask Emily.”

  “You can ask me,” Lillie said, and instantly thought, What the hell am I doing? She felt herself blush.

  Mike grinned. “Maybe you are the right one to ask, Lillie. Sensible Lillie.”

  “That’s not very flattering to Lillie,” Emily said, laughing. “Okay,” Mike said, “pretty Lillie, then. Beautiful Lillie. Is that better, Lillie?”

  “I didn’t mind ‘sensible,’ ” Lillie said, with comic primness, and knew
she meant it. But he’d also called her “beautiful” …

  That evening the boys and Bonnie all left their basketball and wandered over to the paved cafe area where the girls usually danced.

  Sam was the boldest. “Jessie, wanna dance?”

  “Why not?” she said flippantly. Lillie saw that, for the first time in a long time, Jessica had put on the make-up she’d brought with her from Earth. So had Madison.

  Maybe Madison would loan Lillie some eyeliner. “Dance, Lillie?” Mike said. She nodded and he took her in his arms.

  The song was slow, “Always and Only You,” a big hit by Something Extra. Leaning awkwardly against Mike’s chest, Lillie felt waves of warmth roll over her. She didn’t want the song to end.

  It did, and the next one on the cube was a skurler. Lillie hung back, not knowing the steps, but Alex seized her hand. “Come on, Lillie.”

  “I don’t know how to skurl,”

  “It’s easy. I’ll show you.”

  Skurling required the partners to hold each other’s wrists constantly and do as many energetic, rhythmic moves as they could without letting go. Alex was good. Lillie was awful, and once she fell down in a heap. Alex pulled her up, not letting go of her hands, and made her continue. His hand felt warm. She could feel the pulse in his wrist.

  She danced a skurler with Rafe, who was better than she expected, a slow dance with Jason, then another with Jon. Then Sam slipped his arm around her waist. “My turn, Lillie.”

  She didn’t want to dance with Sam. She didn’t even like him! But his arm pulled her strongly to him, and she didn’t pull away. He had a stronger smell than the other boys, a sort of nice smell actually, and the palms of his hands pressed flat against her back. She felt them—oh, yes, she felt them!—even through her T-shirt. But when one palm crept toward the side of her breast, she pushed him away.

  “Don’t be such a cock-tease, Lillie.”

  ‘You leave me alone!” Suddenly she was near tears.

  Sam shrugged and walked away. Lillie started out of the garden, but then changed her mind and sat down in a chair to watch the dancing.

  Sajelle was dancing, very close, with Alex.